Kith and Kin
by Rabble Rouser
Summary: McCoy, at odds with Kirk and Spock after the 5YM, tries to pick up the pieces of his life.


Kith and Kin

By Rabble Rouser

DATE:  January 29, 2003

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: Thanks to Jungle Kitty, Wildcat, and Kathy Dailey for their comments on an early draft and as always my heartfelt thanks to Djinn for her beta. You rock.

For Nesabj, who writes a mean McCoy and pled with me not to let this story die.

© 2003 Rabble Rouser

v v v

McCoy squinted at the screen then looked down to angrily punch out letters at the keyboard.  He was no touch typist but he didn't want to use the voice recorder.  For some reason that felt too facile, too easy to be satisfying.  He stabbed each key as if it was personally responsible for his frustration in finding the right words.

To: Admiral Heihachiro Nogura, CICSF 

Damn blasted fool who doesn't know a disaster in the making...

_From: Commander Leonard H. McCoy, M.D._

He stared at that a minute.  For the last five years he had always added: "CMO, _USS Enterprise_."  He blinked then bent back down to the keyboard.

Date: August 9, 2269 

Damn if I'm going to use any idiotic stardates. Never could get used to the damn things and I'm on terra firma now. 

_Subject: Your Stupid, Assinine Fool Notion of Where to Put Kirk._

The computer automatically corrected the spelling to "asinine" as soon as he typed it.  He overrode the autocorrect and changed it back with grim satisfaction. Assinine as in Nogura you are an ass.

He saw his daughter Joanna lean over to look at the screen.  It was still a shock to see in the sixteen year old the signs of the young woman she was becoming.  His mental picture of her was still of the eleven year-old in pigtails frozen in time from just before he joined the five year mission.  Her eyes were just a shade darker than his.  She had walnut colored hair and strong features that favored him more than her mother.  

Now that Jocelyn had remarried and he was earthside, his ex-wife had relented on her strict insistence on the terms of the custody agreement.  Besides, Jocelyn complained, Joanna was at an age where she felt she had to contradict everything her mother said.  "You take her for a while," Jocelyn told him.  "Maybe you can handle her better." 

So he and his dad had rented a beach cottage for the summer and from what he could tell he was mostly seeing Joanna's good side.  Joanna said she was happy to be away from "the creep" which is the only way she would refer to her new stepfather.  That gnawed at him a bit, but Dad said it was just Joanna's way of showing where her loyalty lay.

"You've been in here an awful long time," she said. 

McCoy only grunted in reply and stared at the computer screen wondering how to continue.

She pointed to the last line he had typed.  "Dad, I know I'm just an ignorant civilian.  But is that the proper way to address an Admiral?"

"It's not the title line.  It's the subject line."

"Don't you think Nogura might be more willing to listen if you...uhm, were just a bit more tactful?"

McCoy sighed.  "I'll tone it down later. I just need to get it out."  He grimaced then began again to attack the keyboard with one finger violently jabbing straight down.

"Why don't you use the voice function?  Watching you hurts."  

McCoy looked up with a scowl.  "I can't compose this that way.  This isn't a medical log."

"I'm more afraid for the computer.  Last week you wrecked the com after slamming it down so hard."

"The damn things are cheap and flimsy.  I told your Granddaddy I'd pay for the replacement.  Kirk the would-be boy admiral just got me upset."

"Boy?  How old is he?"

"Thirty-six," McCoy offered grudgingly. 

Joanna frowned.  "That's seems awfully old to me."

"Not for a job where many of the people holding his rank are older than your Granddad."

"Dad, you told me that he's the only starship captain who has ever finished a five year mission with most of his crew alive and his ship intact.  You're the one who always made him sound like some hero out of an adventure book.  Seems to me he could do anything." 

McCoy didn't know whether to be amused or appalled by the naked hero worship in her voice.  Thank God she's not about a decade older.  "It's not that he couldn't suit the job, hon—it's just the job wouldn't suit him. Or at least in making it suit he'd lose a whole lot of what makes Jim Kirk special." 

"You told me that if there's one thing Jim Kirk knows how to do, it's make decisions.  How can you be sure he isn't making the right one this time?  It's his life."  Joanna crossed her arms at that and set her jaw. 

McCoy heard echoes of earlier wrangles in her words:  "It's my hair, and everyone is doing it that way. "…"It's my room, what if I like it a mess?"…"It's my vacation, I'll do as I please."  Yesterday had meant a high ratio of sulks to smiles when he had insisted she call her stepfather back and apologize.  He didn't like how she'd abruptly say she had to go as soon as her stepfather appeared on the screen, leaving the man red-faced.  She still had to learn not to automatically bristle at any bit of advice or guidance.  Lord knows I know someone a couple of decades older who's equally stubborn these days.

"Leave it to you to take his side," he said.

"I guess I know too well what it's like to be on the other side of this treatment."

McCoy rubbed his jaw.  Looking at Joanna, one side of his mouth involuntarily quirked upward.  "I was right, wasn't I?"

Joanna muttered under her breath.  "Not one of your better qualities."

"I heard that."

"It really isn't.  You always have to say I told you so.  It makes you so hard to agree with even when you're right.  I don't know how Captain Kirk put up with you for those five years."

"He doesn't have to anymore, now does he?" he replied, not able to keep the bitterness out of his voice.  He had spent the most intense, adventurous, exciting years of his life with that man and now it was over.  Now McCoy was of no more importance than what Kirk would allow.

She shrugged.  "Why should anything change?"

"Well, Joanna, unlike you and the rest of the family, he's not stuck with me." 

Joanna gave him a sidelong look.  "That's not all, is it?  Grandpa said you're not fooling him.  That he can tell you're shaken by the way that 'green-blooded elf' just picked himself up and left for Vulcan."

McCoy just sat back at that and looked at his daughter.  She was trying awfully hard to look grown up in her dress these days and with her hair up off her face.  One moment she'd say something that surprised him with her maturity and then the next would act like the young girl she still mostly was.  She had perched herself up on the desk and was playing with the bottom drawer handle with her toes.  Her sundress had ridden up to expose a band-aid on one knee.  McCoy found it hard not to smile at the reminder of the little hellion he remembered with perpetually scraped knees from one escapade after another.  Yet Joanna looked back at him so earnestly it was impossible not to take her seriously.

Was he upset that Kirk might accept that promotion just because it was another sign that things were ending and would never be the same again?  Was it just that he was in mourning for a way of living, one that he had been so sure he'd never miss?  He remembered swearing he'd be glad on the day he never again would have to use a transporter.  Jim didn't have to listen to him anymore, and McCoy was worried he wasn't going to listen. Are you just looking for an argument with Jim, opposing what he wants because it's a way of reconnecting?  McCoy shook his head.

"Joanna, it's not that.  It's more than being upset over things coming to an end.  I know Kirk inside and out, better than he knows himself." 

Better than he knew his own daughter after all these years apart.  They were just getting reacquainted in a way all the correspondence and tapes exchanged over the years couldn't accomplish.  He'd had her for the entire summer, ever since the _Enterprise_ had ended its historic five-year mission.  Getting to know his daughter all over again had been one of the few pleasures of the past two months as Star Fleet had paraded the entire senior _Enterprise_ staff in one public event after another.  

Well, it was down to the boy wonder now.  The brass decided ol' McCoy was more of a liability than an asset after he had mouthed off to a few reporters, and he had been happy to be free of it. Scotty, visibly uncomfortable under press scrutiny, was relieved when he too was soon excused from the spotlight and could put all his energy into the refit.  And Spock—Spock was just gone, and Kirk would go white and tight-lipped if you so much as mentioned his name.  

Kirk was the one the press loved to focus on anyway.  His looks, his charm, his record all made him "good copy."  His detractors, looking at the easy way he handled the reporters, muttered he must be in heaven basking in all the glory.  But anyone who really knew Kirk well could predict his misery.  Kirk always wanted to be in the center of the action.  That certainly was not the same thing as being the center of attention, especially this kind of attention.  Kirk told McCoy the way he was gawked at felt like he was a zoo exhibit "in a very small cage."  McCoy felt it was important to try to explain the man to this child who should have been the center of his life these past five years.

"Kid, I've seen him under conditions you can't even imagine.  I've seen him take tremendous losses that would destroy another man and not even flinch."  McCoy drew himself straight in his chair.  When he met her eyes, he saw her shy away a bit from the intensity of his gaze.  "And you know why? Because he was the captain.  Because he had to get past it because soon the next..."  McCoy gestured his frustration at trying to find the right words with a wave of a hand.  "...thing would be coming up and it was his job to put it right."

"You mean he's a wimp."

McCoy's head snapped up at that.  "Now wait a minute..."

"Isn't that one of your favorite definitions of a wimp?  Someone who can only be strong for others but never for himself?"

"No, that's not what I mean.  Look, he often complained that the ship wouldn't let him have a life.  But deep down, he drew as much strength from the _Enterprise_ as it drew from him.  I understand how appealing this job could look on the surface.  How it can allow him the things he sacrificed like home and a family of his own.  But flying a desk?  That will rot him from the inside out."  

"OK, fine but do one thing for me."  Joanna reached over to open the drawer where she kept her art supplies and took out her sketchbook and a pencil.  "Sometimes the simple old fashioned way is best."  She wrinkled her nose.  "At least with you.  Write down your words of wisdom, oh great and glorious physician.  You can always read them back to the computer when you're finished."

"Now why didn't I think of that?"

"I don't know.  You're head is still up in the stars?  You've got to admit sometimes us mere groundlings know a thing or two."  Joanna bent down and gave him a quick kiss and hug then left him to wrestle with the terror of facing a blank sheet of paper.

For some time, McCoy tapped the pencil absently against the closed sketchpad.  He wished he had Kirk's or Spock's way with words.  Kirk could come up with the kind of speech that rushed right through you like the strumming of strings, leaving you transformed. Spock could counter every argument an opponent could make, then snap close a trap of logic.  McCoy needed other people to sharpen his wit against.  He despaired of finding the flowing eloquence for this he felt he needed. 

He flipped through the pages of the sketchpad to find a blank page and found himself pausing to look at drawing after drawing. 

Here were sketches of Jocelyn elaborately clad and coifed in a manner suited to a woman half her age.  Joanna hadn't softened a line on the face nor did she smudge the boniness of her mother's figure.  Yet somehow Joanna managed to give his ex-wife a look more of pathos than the ridiculous.  He frowned over some drawings toward the front of a boy he didn't recognize. He was dressed outlandishly, like the followers of Doctor Severin.  Lord in Heaven, not a boyfriend please.  She's too young.  A small voice reminded him of what he had been up to around her age and he scowled, staring down at one last sketch of the boy before moving on.  Interspersed throughout were caricatures of " the creep" that, despite McCoy's mood, set him guffawing. 

He found several sketches of Kirk that looked truer to life than any holo.  In one of them, the expression reminded him of a fleeting look McCoy had caught on Jim's face at the ceremony after the ship had made space dock. Utterly lost.  He remembered Joanna being there and her shyness when she had been introduced to Kirk.  Despite that, she didn't seem to have missed much and this had to have been drawn from memory.  He saw a sketch of Spock and quickly turned the page.  Somehow he didn't want to linger and see what Joanna's strokes of charcoal might reveal.

He examined some flattering sketches of himself with Joanna.  One pictured him pitching a ball to her with her at bat in a softball uniform, something he couldn't remember doing since she was eight.  He hadn't even known Joanna could draw a stick figure.  Had she realized she hadn't given him an empty sketchpad?  Was she trying to tell him something?  This kind of talent hadn't come from either Jocelyn or him.  Every time he thought he really knew his daughter, she managed to surprise him.  Not unlike someone else he knew.  He took a deep breath and began again.  Not a memo this time.  He didn't have a chance if he made this a matter of an official report of dissent:

            Dear Admiral Nogura,

After some time he erased Admiral, although he didn't quite dare use Nogura's first name.

            This letter isn't exactly regulation.

He immediately struck out the last sentence.  Never apologize, never explain, when dealing with the brass.  McCoy had never been one for protocol and the chain of command.  This entire letter would bypass several links in that chain.  But then Nogura should expect that from him. 

            You sent me out there several years ago telling me I needed to learn what Starfleet is all

about. Well, Admiral—this is my report:  To boldly go. It's movement, Admiral. It's 

not staying safe. It's not keeping still. And that's Jim Kirk. You can't take a man like 

that and keep him in a lock box like some piece of jewelry you only wear for show.

He knew Heihachiro Nogura mostly by reputation and one memorable encounter seven years ago.  The "sphinx" was supposedly formal, correct.  The joke around Star Fleet was that his first name was "Admiral" and his last name was "sir."  The man could be as bad as a Vulcan, McCoy thought.  The common good was his avowed ideal, and McCoy didn't in the end see much difference between Nogura's notions from that of Surak with his "good of the many." 

McCoy was determined Nogura wouldn't be allowed to forget the good of the one.  If McCoy was to have an effect, he would have to take the measure of two men, Kirk and Nogura, and let what he wrote act as a bridge between them to explain one to the other—whether Kirk liked it or not.  So he would just have to explain how putting Jim behind a desk wouldn't just corrode the man, but be a loss for Starfleet too.

v v v

McCoy knew from personal experience there was more than met the eye to the man whose own legend as a starship captain rivaled Garth's.  McCoy spent his first four years in the service posted at Starfleet Medical in San Francisco.  With a decade of experience as a surgeon, he should have held a higher rank than lieutenant, but had been busted back down a rank for insubordination.  When he was reassigned to shipboard duty, he didn't even think to speak to his immediate superior.  He looked at the bottom of the orders and seeing the laser autopen signature of Admiral Heihachiro Noguro, Chief of Operations, went hunting for him.

He badgered the admiral's office several times a day for a week asking for just five minutes with Nogura. He accused that idiot Tellerite aide of not even passing on his messages.

He knew from fleet scuttlebutt that Nogura always took lunch alone on the bench beside the memorial to the "Lost Colonies."  Doctor Boyce told him it was said that anyone who dared disturb Nogura there would be busted down to swabbie and posted to an ore freighter.  McCoy decided that with his orders there was nothing to lose.  Either way he'd be separated from Joanna.  And this was the one time and place he could gain access to the man without being obstructed by that belligerent aide.  He deliberately dressed in civilian clothes to play down any consideration of rank.

When he first saw Nogura, for a moment he was tempted to draw back.  There was something intense about the Admiral's stance as he stood by the memorial tracing a name with a finger.  Although his lips didn't move, McCoy sensed Nogura was in deep communion with someone.

Just when he was going to start in, Nogura drew himself up and pinned McCoy to the spot with his gaze.  "Doctor McCoy, you are indeed a persistent and brave man.  Qualities I would ordinarily value in an officer if it wasn't mixed in with such a pigheaded stubbornness and refusal to submit to any kind of discipline."

"You know who I am?"

"Naturally, I would be curious about who had Thrav so flustered when ordinarily a double red alert won't elicit a snort.  And as it so happens, your posting was my decision.  But I don't reward junior officers puffed up with self-importance for cutting through the proper channels."

Nogura moved away and McCoy, afraid he was losing his chance, grabbed a sleeve.  Nogura looked at him with a raised eyebrow and slowly McCoy released his grip.  "Do you have any idea what these orders do to me—to my family?  I have an eight year old daughter."

McCoy was determined that Joanna would never be disappointed again because Daddy needed to stay with a patient or go to a medical conference.  In past years, he had been consumed with the fear that any time not spent with a patient or in the lab or reading a journal would make the difference between life and death.  The real difference it made was to his marriage. He didn't want to lose Joanna the same way.

"Doctor McCoy, I respect your abilities.  That is the only reason I'm spending any breath on you.  I know what you did for the victims of that transporter accident.  By all accounts, you're a brilliant surgeon and diagnostician, and Doctor Boyce has nothing but the highest praise for how you run the ER at the hospital.  But you forget you have another title—lieutenant—that puts you on a very low rung with a lot of people above you who should expect your loyalty and obedience."

"Like Doctor Kanick?"  McCoy's voice was openly scornful.

"The way you handled that matter is exhibit number one of why you don't belong in a posting at Starfleet Command."

"She was utterly inept!  Did you expect me to keep quiet?  She killed Ensign Oneukwu by using a medication contraindicated by his chart.  She operated on the wrong eye and half blinded Lieutenant Ker—."

Nogura held up a hand and McCoy found himself clamping his teeth on his words.  "You should have trusted Doctors Boyce and Chen.  They were going to handle things quietly, have her discharged from Starfleet and with an agreement to go into laboratory research where she wouldn't ever deal with patients again.  But by taking it public you made that impossible.  So now we have to go the route of a messy and lengthy court martial and medical review board.  She may even beat the charges and continue to practice medicine.  Did that ever occur to you?"

"I'm a doctor, not a politician."

"Which is why a ship's posting would eminently suit you. You'll rule the roost with no red tape, far away from us useless bureaucrats."

"I can't take a deep space posting."

"You can and you will.  Starfleet isn't a convenient place for you to park yourself and have your living expenses taken care of while you pay alimony and child support.  It's an organization under military discipline and all of us have had to make sacrifices."  McCoy saw Nogura glance back at the memorial then quickly bring his attention back to him.

"I'm the best doctor you have. You can't waste me on some tin bucket out in the back of beyond."

"The _Lydia Sutherland_ is no tin bucket.  She's a sleek, state of the art ship with a complement of 176 exploring the edge of the frontier.  You've never even been out of the solar system.  I think it's well past time you learned what Starfleet is really about.  It'll be good for you.  And I think you'll be good for her captain.  Jim Kirk could use someone who'll challenge him.  Someone who's older…" Nogura looked at him speculatively. "…and hopefully wiser he can confide in.  Someone older than the others on his senior staff like his First, Mitchell.  And given the personal risks that young man takes, I think your medical skills will be stretched to their limits keeping him in one piece."

"Great—a glory hound."

"Some no doubt think so.  But I see a man who takes personal responsibility, duty, and loyalty to those he serves with very seriously.  And who never forgets it's our business to take the risks so others don't have to.  That's what separates those of us who wear the uniform from those who don't.  Don't forget that when you put it back on." 

Nogura gave the memorial one last lingering look then strode away quickly.  For a moment, McCoy watched him go then turned back to the memorial running his gaze over the spot that took Nogura's attention.  The memorial was to the victims of the famines of '46 on three different planets.  Canopis III, Tarsus IV, and Turkana IV.  The planets' crops failed due to a fungus from a common grain shipment.  But what sealed the colonies' fate was the Great Ionic Storm that cut off communication to an entire sector for months.  Two names chiseled together caught his eye under the names of victims of the blight on Canopis.

_Tamiko Kantauro-Nogura, 2208-2246_

_Kenji Nogura, 2233-2246._

When later that day McCoy cornered Boyce in his office to complain about Nogura's intransigence, his supervisor looked at him incredulously.  "You never cease to amaze me, McCoy.  Don't you ever listen?  I'm surprised Nogura didn't bust you down to ensign.  You still don't understand, do you?"

"I only understand I'm going to be separated from my family and have my talents wasted out in some tin bucket on the frontier because I dared raise some fuss."

"If you had looked two feet to your left from the names of Nogura's family, you would have found other names under Tarsus IV.  When the ionic storms lifted and the distress calls came in, Nogura's ship, the _Lexington_, was the closest Federation ship in the sector.  Nogura decided that reports of executions made Tarsus the first priority for the grain shipments.  He ordered the _Lexington_ to make best speed to Tarsus.  That decision cost him his wife and son.  Ironically your future skipper owes his life to that decision.  Kirk's a survivor of Tarsus.  He's the same age Nogura's son would be if he had survived.  Do you really think Nogura's the kind of man who makes his decisions based on a petty tit for tat?  Or that he'll spare you or anyone else, now or in the future?"

"You seem to know a lot about my new boss.  Why do I smell a rat?"

"Your being reassigned to a deep space ship was my recommendation, Leonard.  You're a fine doctor but you still need to learn what Starfleet is about.  My own time as a CMO on the _Enterprise_ was invaluable.  I'm hoping the _Lydia Sutherland_ can be the making of you—or the breaking of you.  Frankly, I don't care which.  I don't want you back here until you've learned you're not God and all his angels in heaven."

McCoy left in a huff.  This was supposed to teach him a lesson, was it?  McCoy was stubbornly determined Starfleet wasn't going to break him to harness.  All right.  He wouldn't make any more trouble.  Just quietly finish his hitch and leave without making his mark on the organization or it leaving one on him.

v v v

McCoy came aboard the _Lydia Sutherland_ for the first time in a foul mood and determined to stay that way.  The time that had passed since his encounter with Nogura and Boyce hadn't done anything to assuage his resentment over his new assignment.  And using the transporter always left him off balance.  He still had nightmares about the transporter accident at Starfleet Command that had landed so many—damn few of who he could help at all—in his ER. He always felt a touch of vertigo, which he knew had nothing to do with the transporter's physical effects.  He began patting himself down to reassure himself he was all there.

"What's the matter, Doc? Forgot something?" a voice lazily drawled.

The man who had spoken had braid marking him as a lieutenant commander.  Another man grinning beside him wore the stripes of a full commander.  Dear Lord in Heaven that has to be Kirk.  He couldn't be out of his twenties.  McCoy felt his stomach clench at the thought of his safety being in the hands of someone so callow.

"I just wanted to make sure I'm all here with that blasted thing scattering my atoms.  You're Commander Kirk?"

"That's Captain," Kirk said.  "A ship's skipper is always addressed as 'captain' regardless of rank."

"I don't put much store on titles."

"I expect each person on board to be treated by you with all due courtesy and respect, Doctor.  Is that clear?" Kirk said in a sharper voice.

"Abundantly."  McCoy rankled at being corrected by a man who had to be a least a decade younger than him. 

Kirk nodded then smiled as if to say the matter was forgotten.  "Welcome aboard, Doctor McCoy.  This is Commander Gary Mitchell, my first."

Mitchell looked at him with such a grave expression, McCoy was sure he was being mocked even before Mitchell confirmed it by saying, "You see, doc, Lieutenant Commanders are addressed as 'Commander.'  I'm sure I can dig up the manual on protocol if you need to bone up."

McCoy was saved from responding by the entrance of a girl who didn't look as if she was far out of her teens.  Kirk introduced her as his assistant, Nurse Sheila Kelly. 

Once he got to sickbay he immediately began examining the equipment.  His inspection and Kelly's complaints informed him that "state of the art" translated into "still has bugs to work out" and "sleek" translated to "not enough room to swing a cat." 

Alone in his closet-sized cabin at the end of his first duty shift, his feeling of homesickness was a palpable thing seated beside him.  He began a communication to Joanna.  "Hey, Kiddo, I'm at my new posting and things are just great. I have great new toys in sickbay..."  As he began to narrate to her the events of the day, they suddenly took on a new perspective.  He began to see the humor in his first encounter with Kirk and Mitchell and the warmth in Kelly's chatter and Kirk's attempts to make him feel at ease at dinner that evening.  By the time he finished telling Joanna about his day, he suddenly found his homesickness easing.  He wasn't alone as long as he had Joanna to share the adventure with. 

Over the next weeks McCoy found that the rhythm of life on a starship was different than what he was used to in an ER.  Instead of the constant challenge of emergencies, he was dealing with the sprains and mild infections. Bored, he found himself gravitating to the bridge more often. Kirk took his sporadic appearances in good humor chatting amiably and it seemed aimlessly on different subjects.  Years later he would look back and realize he was being subtly wooed, drawn into Kirk's own enthusiasm for exploration and just as subtly warned of what the captain expected from his Chief Medical Officer.

Unlike the hospital, there was no getting away from people. Kirk expected the CMO to have dinners with his officers as a matter of course.  What struck him when he sat down with them is how young everyone looked. He was all too aware of being the old man of the ship at forty-four.  It was Mitchell who dubbed him "Bones."  Supposedly, it was a reference to his status as the ship's "saw bones," an old moniker for a surgeon.  But somehow he felt Mitchell was alluding to his age.  He and Mitchell often traded barbed quips with Kirk acting as an amused referee.  Lee Kelso, the helmsman, would startle you when he made a comment—both because he was a man of few words and because he made every one count.  Quan Li, the communications officer, was the baby of the group; so eager to get into the conversation his words would trip over each other. 

Then there was Lieutenant Althea Morris, the security chief.  Watching her and Kirk together was one of his favorite pastimes.  Sometimes she would sit as far away from Kirk as possible.  Other times she would sit down next to him as if compelled and their heads would lean together, one dark and one fair, her rich lilting voice blending with his smooth, rounder tones until often it would be Kirk who pulled back as if burned.

He asked Kelly about the pair who shrugged and uncharacteristically offered up no comment.  That put him on high alert.  He tried Mitchell next when he caught him alone.  For all that he seemed to relish their battles, every once in a while Mitchell could surprise him with a serious side.

"Ask him," Mitchell said.  "If you're so damned interested, ask the captain."

"I can't ask him that."

"Why not?"

"He's not an easy man to talk to."

"Funny, I have no problem."

"Haven't you known him since you were both at the academy?"

"So?  Look, Bones, I'm not saying that doesn't make it easier.  I knew him before the shields went up and the phasers locked on.  When he was as free with his gifts and his fears as a cat dropping a mouse at his owner's feet. Before he learned not to show off, as well as not to show any doubts.  You want him to open up to you, I have two pieces of advice."

"And what's that?"

"Pay the price of admission.  Don't expect him to spill his guts while you stay the wise old sage.  And don't go behind his back trying to get gossip."

McCoy stiffened, opened his mouth automatically to reply, then found he just didn't have a comeback for that one so he spun on his heel and left feeling more flustered than he had in years.   Mitchell was better at getting under his skin than anyone he had ever met. 

And then right after that things stopped being boring.   He found that it was one thing to deal with the results of carnage being brought to him and another to be in the midst of carnage and pray he wouldn't be the next casualty.  They were sent to Argelius IV to pull the Federation delegation out since the natives were engaged in a nasty war that was threatening to go nuclear. 

McCoy was surprised to see Kirk go along with them in the landing party.  He had always gotten the impression it was the captain's privilege, even obligation, to stay with the ship.  Kirk didn't seem to see it that way.  McCoy saw the captain everywhere.  Arguing with the attaché who wanted them to evacuate some of the Argelians as well, then herding them all out to the beam out point, sheltering them as well as he could with his body when they came under fire from old-fashioned but still deadly guns the aliens used. 

It was then that McCoy found how much harder it was to be the CMO of a starship than an ER surgeon or old country doctor.  To know the person under your laser scalpel by more than the sorrow and fear that hung over their families.  Because both Quan and Althea were hit. And he had to choose which to treat first.  And Quan lost.

It was Kirk who came to him that night in his tiny quarters. And brought the alcohol and two glasses. 

"I thought it was against regulations to have that on board."

"Damn the regulations.  It's medicinal."

"Who's the doctor around here?"

"You are."  Kirk pressed one of the glasses on him, then poured the amber liquid into both their glasses.  "Salut."  Kirk drank it down with one swallow.  Then perched himself on the desk and looked at him. McCoy found himself a little spooked by that gaze.  Kirk looked completely sober, in control, but so…tense?  No, too determinably relaxed.

"Lieutenant Morris will be fine?"

"She'll be fine.  It's a miracle it wasn't worse.  Can't believe you came out of that debacle unscathed."

"I did at that.  Charmed life."  Kirk didn't sound like he believed any of that.

"You care for Althea don't you?"

"I care about all my crew, Doctor."

"But she's special?"

"I'm the captain.  If Starfleet believed the captain needed a woman of his own I'm sure they would have issued one.  She's one of my officers.  A very promising one.  Starship captain material.  She doesn't need her boss out of loneliness and misplaced romanticism causing…complications."

"There are no rules against love."

"No written rules.  But some of the unwritten ones are even more powerful.  For captains anyway."  Kirk refilled his own glass.  "You haven't touched your drink, Bones.  To Ensign Quan Li.  Posted to the _Lydia Sutherland_ fresh out of the academy, only child of his proud parents, not yet twenty-one."

McCoy stood up at that.  "You throwing that in my face? I did everything I could to save the boy—" 

McCoy, stopped at Kirk's grip on his arm, looked up and was held by the sight of the overly bright eyes and haunted face.  "Bones, I don't blame you.  I'm the one—"

"You're not blaming yourself?"

"I was in command.  He was my officer, your patient. I didn't come here to—"  Kirk knocked over a holo and it went clattering across the room.  "Oh, hell."  Kirk went to retrieve it, his movements awkward for once, like a much older man.  Kirk's face softened as he looked at the holo. "Your daughter?"

"Joanna." 

Kirk nodded jerkily, picked up the bottle and turned toward the door.  McCoy stopped him with a hand at his shoulder, pushed him down to sit in his chair.  And then finally sipped at the drink.  It went down smoothly and then he felt the kick.

Kirk grinned faintly as he watched McCoy's eyes widen.  "Saurian brandy.  I take it your first time."

McCoy remembered Mitchell's words, about paying his dues, and took a deep breath.  "He's the first patient I ever lost who I considered a friend.  It hurts more than I ever thought it could.  All that training, the detachment, blown to hell.  How do you keep yourself open to caring about them, live on the same ship, eat with them and trade jokes and still function when their life is in your hands?"

Kirk looked down at his drink as if it might hold the answer.  "You just do." 

After that night it wasn't so hard to connect.  He no longer saw the glory hound, or the cocky kid, or an authoritarian martinet.  He saw a man struggling with many of the same problems he was, who evoked in him a wealth of emotion and sometimes drew out an eloquence from him he never thought he had.  He learned to listen, oh so carefully, and not draw a breath when Kirk gave away scattered pieces of himself.  Kirk told him about Carol, about their son David, and how he had promised to stay away.  McCoy recognized the pain in the voice.  It was what he felt in being separated from Joanna.  For the first time in years, he found himself feeling sorrier for someone else than for himself.

One day McCoy was walking through the corridors, exchanging greetings and joking with crew and as he walked along he realized he was happier than he could ever remember.  He saw Mitchell. "Mitchell," he called out.

"Yeah, Bones?"  Mitchell stopped and turned.

The words were forced out of McCoy grudgingly.  "You were right."

Mitchell broke into an insufferable smirk and walked back, got so close McCoy involuntarily took a step back.  "I'm uncanny, aren't I?"

McCoy grunted.  "You're a pain in the ass, Mitchell.  I don't know what Kirk could possibly see in you as a friend."

"Oh, I did him a great service.  Taught him not to take himself so seriously—not to be so damn grim."

"And what did he teach you?"

"To take myself more seriously."  Mitchell's face grew serious.  "Some friends just make you want to be more than you are."

v v v

McCoy remembered Mitchell's words when he had learned Kirk had to kill Mitchell himself.  Kirk had little choice.  Mitchell had already murdered Kelso.  It was either kill Mitchell or be killed by his best friend of fifteen years.  McCoy remembered that before Mitchell had gone mad with power, he was Kirk's friend.  And his. 

And now he had lost another friend, the one ironically who had taken on Mitchell's role as Kirk's best friend and McCoy's own personal demon.  Spock, you bastard, why did you leave?  Ever since Spock had left, he had felt Kirk spinning away from him at a greater and greater velocity. 

It was funny.  He had to admit he had been more than a little jealous of Spock at the beginning.  It was one thing to cede a place to Mitchell, to the man who had known Jim a decade before McCoy had ever stepped onto Kirk's first command.  It was another to step aboard the _Enterprise_ after a year's assignment on Capella and find Spock already had cemented a place by Kirk's side, to find so much of Kirk's time monopolized by the Vulcan in games of three-dimensional chess that McCoy couldn't follow, or sharing martial arts exercises that hurt him just to watch.  McCoy relished the fact then that from what he could tell, he, not Spock, was still the man Kirk would confide his doubts and fears in. What Vulcan could understand human frailty anyway?  Even one supposedly half-Human?

What kind of friend could Spock be?  The damn man had green ice in his veins.  He couldn't feel love or affection, or any one of the complex strands that went into a friendship, couldn't appreciate what Jim had to offer.  But Spock did.  And the more McCoy saw that the more he couldn't resist needling Spock, trying to get just another peek at what lay beneath the cool surface.  And increasingly determined to strip more away with his barbed words with each glimpse he was given.  Using Spock's feelings for Kirk were often the best way to goad Spock into a revealing reaction.

Spock told him once that Edith Keeler had said that his place was at Jim's side, as if he'd always had been there and always would be.  McCoy had been shocked Spock had confessed that to him.  But then by common unspoken consent, Edith Keeler was someone they never brought up to Jim.  It was something the two of them alone shared, that they had been the cause of Kirk's pain.  McCoy by having caused the fold in time they had to correct by allowing her destruction and Spock by having to make Kirk understand the necessity.

That was the bond between Spock and him at first: Kirk.  Protecting Kirk from himself and his propensity to push himself too hard, risk himself too much, and always be last man out of danger.  Conspiring to rein Kirk in when he went too far or pushed others too far.  Keeping Kirk from becoming so obsessed he forgot he was captain by rule of law not divine right.  But then, by God, Spock crept into his soul too, until McCoy, to his shock, found he considered the Vulcan a friend of the same order as Kirk. 

Until Spock up and left to become a Kolinahri without so much as a face-to-face goodbye and leaving all his friends utterly bewildered.  He still didn't know why Spock had left.  And he was sure Kirk didn't know either.  And now McCoy was left alone to keep Kirk from making the mistake of his life.  Damn the Vulcan.  His original judgment had been right.  What kind of friend was he?

McCoy, lost in the past while he had been composing, looked down at the drawing pad and found that the letter had written itself.  He read it aloud to the computer and watched the last words form on the screen.

I learned the lesson you wanted to teach me too well, Admiral. Staying on the ground

isn't what Starfleet is all about, it's not what Kirk's about and it's not what I'm about 

anymore. And I'm not going to stay here and watch while the finest man I've ever known

is ground down to nothing but someone who signs padds all day.  If you're going to do 

this to Kirk, then you can have my resignation.

You don't want to resist me on that. Keep me around and I won't stay quiet. The Kanick 

affair will be petty in comparison. Trust me—you don't want to see what happens when 

Mr. Nitro meets Mr. Glycerin.

He inserted his electronic signature and hit send without another thought.  Saw the sky lighten by the window and realized he had been up all night.  He rubbed his hands.  Wait till Nogura opens this little message.  McCoy fell asleep with a wide smile on his face.  Woke up in a happy mood that kept the same silly grin on his face.

Until Kirk showed up at the door with a padd in his hand and a look on his face that made McCoy wonder if he had been too smart for his own good.  One look at Kirk and his father and Joanna retreated upstairs.

Kirk slammed his open hand into the wall by McCoy's head with such force McCoy winced.  Kirk waved the padd in front of his face.  "I can't believe you sent this to Nogura.  Tell me you'll send another message to him and tell him you were drunk.  Which is the only explanation I can accept."

"I did it for your own good.  If you weren't so damn stubborn—"

"My own good?  Are you my father?  Am I Joanna's age?"

"Joanna is much too mature and controlled than to throw the kind of tantrum you are right now."

At that Kirk laughed and McCoy drew a breath.  "All right, Doctor.  Let's discuss this rationally like two adults."  Kirk read words off the padd:  "The day will come when Kirk looks into the mirror and wonders where the real Jim Kirk went.  Where's the man who lived to explore and push the limits of himself and all those around him?  If the job is more substantial than cutting ribbons and he's properly distracted by Ms. Ciani, it may take a year or two but he'll rebel."  Kirk slowly shook his head.  "My God, you're arrogant.  Not only do you think you can predict the future better than poor Mitch ever could, you have to bring Lori into this?"

"My God, Jim, can't you see it?  When it comes to your personal life, you've always been too controlled by your gonads.  And Nogura's…girl, Lori…"  He almost said whore.  "…is famous at being able to twist people to her liking.  That's her _job_ for God's sake.  To use her expertise as a psychiatrist to get people to do what Nogura wants."  By any means necessary he had heard.

"I'm going to marry her."

McCoy felt the breath go out of him.  "Well, well, well. Congratulations.  Did Carol Marcus turn you down?"  McCoy saw Kirk flinch and a not very worthy part of himself danced with glee.  That shot went home.  He knew that Kirk had said from the start that he hoped that now that he was accepting a ground post that maybe Carol would relent.  At least let him have some connection with his son.

"You're an expert surgeon all right.  You know exactly where to cut."

"Jim, I'm sorry.  I got angry and lashed out because I care.  I know you're tired.  I wouldn't oppose your doing a stint at the academy, or supervising the Enterprise's refit.  Maybe you need a rest from command precisely so it's driven home to you how much you need it.  Even when you had the _Enterprise_, being on the bridge was never enough for you.  Hell, even when you were on the bridge you'd be more likely to be pacing or looking over someone's shoulder than keeping your backside warm.  How long do you think it will take before you'll go out of your mind if you take the promotion?"

Kirk sighed and rubbed the spot between his eyes.  "I always knew that being a starship captain wasn't forever.  They don't give it to you forever and I can't do it any longer.  It strips you of everyone and everything you care about.  Is it really worth it if I give it my entire life and wind up alone?  I can make a difference here at Command and still have a real life. You don't know how rare Noguras are among the admiralty. How rare it is among the brass to have someone with real line experience or who doesn't quickly fall out of the habit of thinking that way. It's a chance to build Starfleet's future. Get rid of some pet peeves. To be an advocate for those still out there. And every once in a while, to walk on a beach with no braid on my sleeves, reach out and feel another human hand reach back." Kirk looked steadily back at McCoy and said softy. "Take back your recommendation." 

"No." The single softly spoken word hung between them and McCoy despaired as he saw Kirk's face slowly harden.

"You're not going to change anything. Just make things harder for me with the rest of the brass by calling into question my ability to do this job. As my friend—"

"I am your friend, Jim.  And as your friend, and your doctor, and even as a Starfleet Officer I can't take it back.  I believe every word of it."

"Then I really am alone.  You and Spock are two of a kind."

"I'm not running away.  I'm still here, dammit."

"Fine.  Stay here.  I'm leaving." 

McCoy watched Kirk leave and felt a crushing pressure in his chest.  He wasn't sure how he knew—but he felt this wasn't like other arguments they'd had.  Kirk wouldn't be looking him up in his office or the mess hall.  They wouldn't be going together on a landing party that forced them to repair the small tears that appeared in their friendship from time to time.  McCoy couldn't order Kirk into his sickbay to prod him inside and out.  This split had the feeling of forever.

McCoy heard the chime of the com in the next room.  He hoped it wasn't for him.  If it wasn't Nogura, it wasn't worth taking the call, and if it was, he feared the words wouldn't come.  After a while, he heard the sound of the door slamming open.  When he looked up, he saw his father glaring at him.  "There is a transmission for you.  From your wife."  

The way his father spit out that last word left no doubt in McCoy's mind that he didn't mean Jocelyn.  The veins standing out like cords in his father's neck, the blue eyes bulging, signaled an incipient explosion.  McCoy stood up and nodded his head feeling like he was pulling on strings to make each motion.  He jerkily made his way to the comset in the main room barely registering Joanna's presence.

"Doctor McCoy, this is Lieutenant Hanoun at Starfleet Central.  The _USS Horizon_ has sent us this communiqué to pass on to you.  Do you want to take it now or should I transmit the data for you to view latter?"

"I'll take it now," he managed to get out.

A familiar face filled the comset screen.  She was a delicately featured woman whose petite frame and soft voice masked a stony will.  Her exotic dress and the slightly clipped formal tones of her voice would immediately identify her to his father and Joanna as alien, other.

"The People of Yonada have reached the world of promise, and it is rich, and green, and lovely to the eyes.  Those from the Federation are here, with us, learning from us as we learn from them.  But for me the joy remains hollow.  From the first time I saw you, Husband, I knew that you were what would make the promise complete.  I saw eyes that looked directly upon me without fear or subservience."

The voice wavered on the last word.  She paused and began again.

"When I learned that your life was spared, that you were cured by the old knowledge, I could only think of how it would feel to fill my eyes again with the sight of you.  I ask that you return to me.  I find that even now my heart cannot feel it has reached its destination without you.  I once asked you to stay however short a time that would be, a day, a week, a year.  I offered you a chance to rule by my side."

Her eyes closed a moment; her head bowed.  When she raised her head, McCoy had the uncanny feeling that she saw him.  Her eyes were bright with unshed tears. 

"We had so little chance to learn of each other, and for you to learn of my people.  I do not expect forever.  I sense your spirit is not one to stay at rest."

She lifted her chin and her voice had no trace of a plea.  "I shall take any time you bestow upon me as a gift from the Creator."

The young woman from Starfleet Central came back on the screen.  "Any reply, sir?"

"Uh...not yet, Lieutenant.  I need some time."

"Understood, sir.  Starfleet Central out."

His father was the first to speak.  "Well, well, well. I suppose congratulations are in order.  When were you planning on telling us about your marriage to royalty?  Who is she, your Majesty, if I may ask?"

"Natira, High Priestess of the people of Yonada."

Joanna's face looked pinched and ashen.  "What did she mean, that your life was 'spared?'"

He took her hand only to find it was ice cold.  He gathered both her hands and began to gently chafe them with his.

"I had xenopolycythemia."  His mouth twisted up.  "I know, quite a mouthful.  Spock found the cure in their records but I didn't know until we got back on the ship.  So Natira didn't know either."

Joanna wrenched her hands violently from his grasp and walked to the window.  She hugged herself tightly, and he could see her begin to shake.  He began to move toward her but stopped at her angry look.

"You were going to die and you didn't even think of coming home did you?  You were just going to disappear?  And now you're going back to her?  Great, a high priestess for a stepmother.  You've outdone Mom in the status sweepstakes.  At least, unlike the creep she just married, this one will be far, far away.  I hope you two will be very happy together," she finished sarcastically.

"Joanna...I"

"Shut up, Leonard, you've said enough," his father said.  His father pushed past him and spoke softly to Joanna, who shook her head sharply.  His father hugged her quickly then led her to the stairs urging her upstairs with a gentle push.  She glared back at him a moment, then suddenly stomped up the stairs two at a time.  He could hear her door slam upstairs.

The elder McCoy turned back to his son.  "Xenopolycythemia.  Very rare, very serious bone marrow disorder and until a year ago incurable.  Its victims could expect perhaps a year from the time of diagnosis.  Never had a patient with it.  When Starfleet released news of a cure with hints there was more where that came from, it created quite a stir.  Just how long did you have this illness?"

"As it so happens, less than a week."

"So you didn't have time to tell us.  You were planning to tell us?  To come home?  Or is Joanna right that you just planned to disappear?"

McCoy found he couldn't meet his father's gaze and he saw the older man nod his head.  "You were planning to stay on the ship."

"Kirk wouldn't have let me.  Dad, you've got to understand.  I wanted to spend the time I had left being useful to someone."

"So you married the high poobah muckety muck."

"There wasn't a trace of pity in Natira.  I didn't want to come home and be a burden..."

"A burden?  God damn you to Hell.  How do you think we felt with you God knows where doing God knows what?  How do you think we felt when we heard stories about the _Enterprise_'s confrontation with the Gorns and the Romulans?  Having a hero for a captain may make for good stories and set a girl's heart a flutter but I can tell you it didn't exactly do good for my ticker.  You have no idea of what we went through when war was declared against the Klingons with you on the front lines."

"I'm sorry."

"You should have come home.  As soon as you knew, you should have come home."

"If I had, I'd be months dead and Natira's people and the people on Duran V with them.  Natira's ship was on a collision course until we found a way to divert it.  Their records had the cure.  I made a difference out there, Dad.  I knew every day on the Enterprise that what I did mattered and helped keep Joanna safe."

"Someone else could be the CMO of the _Enterprise_.  No one else can be a father to Joanna."

"No, Dad," McCoy said quietly but firmly.  "No one else could do my job.  Not half as well.  And I'm home now."

"Oh?  I wouldn't know it.  Considering what takes up your thoughts and your days I would think you're still on the _Enterprise_."  His father gripped his right arm tightly.  "Let them go, Leonard.  In the end they're not your blood.  I know it hurts now.  People who work closely together in the midst of danger, living with each other, it can seem like they're closer then kin.  But they don't stay in your life.  You'll swear you'll keep in touch and in the end you'll hear less and less of them and at reunions you'll tell lies about how you have to get together more often.  It's family that really knows you—that'll be with you to the end."

McCoy felt his stomach clench at the picture his father painted.  He took a breath and calmed himself. Dad's wrong.  He could never understand what we've been through together.  The thought of how Spock had up and left without a word flashed through his mind but he shook it off.  "I've changed, Dad.  Changed for the better because people didn't assume they knew me but let me grow.  Changed because they shook my complacency and pushed my limits.  And I'm glad of it."

"What are you going to do about Natira?"

"I don't know."  The truth was he was no longer sure what he felt for her.  She seemed some creature of his fancy rather than a real woman.

"Well, do let us know.  If you'll excuse me, I'm going to look after a girl who right now is feeling a world of hurt."

McCoy began to follow but his father shook his head.  "Leave her to me.  I know her.  You no doubt have more important things on your mind."

"No, actually I don't," he said and went up the stairs.

Just the way Joanna looked at him made him want to withdraw.  But something inside him whispered if he wasn't careful he'd lose her too.  That it was a miracle he hadn't already.  He had started out with good intentions and had done his best to keep in touch.  But Joanna had herself never been a good correspondent.  His father had stayed involved and would be the one to write letters to him bragging of everything from her pitching a perfect game, to earning all As on her report cards.  And McCoy had never had the fortitude to speak into silence.  So his own correspondence had gotten shorter and spaced farther apart over the years, until he had been mortified to realize one year he had completely forgotten her birthday.  It had been his father who had covered for him and sent something on his behalf.

He didn't know her.  Not really.  Was the strange boy that filled her drawing pads a friend?  A boyfriend?  She had shifted ambitions so quickly when she was younger.  What did she dream of now?  Upholding the McCoy tradition and becoming a doctor?   Entering the academy to follow in the footsteps of her heroes?  Developing her talents as an artist?  He suddenly realized that for all her seeming good spirits during this vacation she had managed to avoid talking to him about anything important and he hadn't wanted to push her.

McCoy just stood at the door waiting for the words to come, knowing it was important to get them right.  Another chance with Joanna wouldn't come again.  In a couple of years she'd reach escape velocity, go to college, fall in love, live her own life he'd have no part in building.  And that was a good thing, wasn't it?  That children grow to care less and less for your approval, make their own lives and create a family of their own.  Wouldn't it be sad if someone as vital as Joanna stayed tied forever to a crotchety old man like him?

"What do you want, Dad." Joanna spit the last word out as an accusation.  She sat on her bed twisting a tissue in her hand.  She then began to methodically tear it into pieces.

"I'm leaving Starfleet.  I still have a couple of years left in my enlistment—but I'm sure that I can work something out.  Maybe go into the reserves for an extended period.  I do want to go and see Natira.  See if there's still anything between us."

Joanna smiled bitterly at that.  "Happy trails."

"I want you to come with me."

"Off world?  Mom'll never—"

"I'll talk to her.  We'll work it out.  If we can't, I'll stay here.  I've missed far too much of your growing up.  I'd like to make up for some of that."

"And naturally the High Priestess will be so happy to see me in tow."

"She'd better.  You're part of the package."  McCoy sat on the bed.  "To be honest, Joanna, I suspect we come from worlds that are just too different—literally—for us to stay together, Natira and I.  But you were right to be mad at me.  People who care about each other shouldn't just disappear from each other's lives.  I don't want to say goodbye to Natira over a subspace communication.  Of course, if you don't want to go into space…"

"I didn't say that," she said quickly.  "Can we go on a starship?" 

"Maybe.  I had heard they're getting a group of medical specialists together to examine what Natira's people have to offer.  I might be able to swing a couple of berths."

McCoy watched Joanna as she struggled not to smile and failed.  He wasn't fooled into thinking he had completely won her over.  But he hadn't missed the awed tone at the word "starship" he used to hear on those rare long-ago nights when he had gotten home early enough to read her fantastic tales to hang dreams on. 

How strange it was—family.  Not even the ties between parent and child were unbreakable.  You didn't get to choose your family.  Even when you chose to have a child, eventually they became someone strange beyond what you ever imagined.  But did you ever really choose your friends either?  He, Kirk, Spock had been thrown together and forced to make things work between them.  Maybe there wasn't so much difference between kith and kin, friend and family after all?  Chance brought you all together, but it was your choices that kept you together.  The choice to pretend there was no choice but to work things out.  Make the commitment.  Maybe someday he'd have another chance to make things right with Jim. But that could wait.

"So tell me.  Who's the boy in the sketchpad?"

The End 

_Please write to me and let me know what you thought._

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